Self-hosted personal AI agent
Hermes Agent
Hermes Agent is an MIT-licensed agent from Nous Research that runs on your machine or a server and takes instructions from the terminal or chat apps such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, and email. Its selling point is persistence: it keeps memory across sessions and turns solved problems into reusable skills. It works with any model provider, or with 200+ models through the paid Nous Portal.
Best for
- Developers who want an agent that remembers projects across sessions
- Scheduled reports and briefings described in plain language
- Running agent work in Docker, over SSH, or on Modal instead of the host
Not best for
- Users who want a fully managed product with no setup
- Teams that need audited, predictable behavior: self-generated skills change over time
Quick facts
- Creator
- Nous Research
- Category
- Self-hosted personal AI agent
- Autonomy
- Configurable (human-in-the-loop to autonomous)
- Platforms
- macOS, Windows, Linux, Self-hosted
- Pricing
- Free and open source under the MIT license; bring your own model provider. Nous Portal subscriptions from $20 to $200 monthly bundle model credits for 200+ models.
In Depth: Hermes Agent
What it can do
- Persistent memory and automatically generated skills
- Natural-language scheduling for recurring tasks
- Isolated subagents for delegated work
- Web search, browser automation, vision, image generation, and text-to-speech
- Five terminal backends: local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, and Modal
Setup and requirements
- macOS 12+, Windows 10/11, or Linux
- A model provider API key or a Nous Portal plan
- Optional chat-app accounts for remote control
Safety and limitations
Agents take real actions on your behalf. Read this before you connect anything important.
- Use a Docker, SSH, or Modal backend to keep commands off your main machine
- Review auto-generated skills before relying on them for anything important
Pricing and access
Free and open source under the MIT license; bring your own model provider. Nous Portal subscriptions from $20 to $200 monthly bundle model credits for 200+ models.
Plans and limits change often. Confirm current pricing on hermes-agent.nousresearch.com before you commit.
